In some time slotted peer to peer systems, dedicated resources are allocated for the purpose of the contention resolution for traffic transmission, e.g. during a connection scheduling phase. In some such systems, each link is assigned a fraction of such dedicated resources where transmit request and transmit request response signals are sent so that links in a neighborhood can contend for the use of traffic channels. The dedicated resources, which are portions of control channels and do not carry traffic data signals, are usually considered to be system overhead. How to tightly control the use of resources used for contention resolution for traffic transmission is a problem for such peer to peer systems.
In some peer to peer systems, a connection identifier (CID) corresponds to a resource unit in the traffic contention resources for every traffic transmission slot. In some such systems, the physical location of the resource unit in the traffic contention resources corresponding to a CID may, and sometimes does, change over time to allow permutation of instantaneous priorities in contention. In some systems, a CID channel is provided to help users acquire a locally unique CID by enforcing existing links to indicate their presence thereby allowing the user device to identify and acquire an unused CID. When a new link attempts to join the system but only finds out no unique CID is available, the new link might get rejected of the channel use until next attempt.
In this design approach, the total amount of resource units for traffic contention corresponds to the size of the CID space, which corresponds to the resource units required to support the maximum number of contending links permitted in the system in a neighborhood. A larger CID space facilitates a lower call block rate, but on the other hand, more overhead for the traffic contention channel. In a peer to peer system at different times different numbers of wireless devices may desire to contend for traffic resources. The amount of traffic resources that a particular wireless device in a peer to peer system may need may be expected to vary over time. In addition different wireless devices and/or different types of wireless devices may have different traffic resource needs.
In view of the above, it should be appreciated there is a need for flexible methods of contention for traffic resources in a peer to peer network.